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'Winter's Tale': Where schmaltz meets sorcery

By Stephanie Merry, The Washington Post

Updated:
02/12/2014 07:01:48 PM EST

When it comes to melodrama, few actors deliver the goods like Colin Farrell, with his melancholy eyebrows and flair for summoning big fat tears, and Russell Crowe, who bellows when he's not bloviating. The two are perfectly cast as adversaries in “Winter's Tale,” a shamelessly sentimental magical fable based on Mark Helprin's 1983 novel.

Farrell plays Peter Lake, a puppy dog of a thief who's on the run from his former boss, Pearly Soames (Crowe). Pearly is a shifty turn-of-the-century mob boss with a hair-trigger temper and a twitch that creates a sinister smile on his aggressively scarred face. Also, he happens to be a demon.

Pearly is infuriated that his protege wants to steal from people without killing them, which doesn't mesh with the mafioso's business model. More troubling, Peter has been seen flying around town on a winged white horse, which smacks of miracles and other angelry.

For demons, a pegasus is cause for concern, but nothing is more troublesome than true love. And wouldn't you know? Peter has fallen for Beverly Penn (Jessica Brown Findlay from “Downton Abbey”), a 21-year-old heiress with wavy red locks and a beatific smile. She speaks in poetic verse and practically floats through her father's mansion in a white nightgown, but this angel's fate is sealed: She's dying of consumption.

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In one of the movie's most winning scenes, the two meet while Peter is robbing the place. Rather than throw him out, Beverly offers him tea. It's one of the few genuinely comedic scenes that lighten what could be a self-serious fairy tale.

But everything falls apart when the time-traveling starts. The movie is broken into two parts. Most of it takes place in the early 1900s, but another portion unfolds in the present day, following an unaged and amnesiac Peter as he meets a woman (Jennifer Connelly) and her cancer-stricken daughter (Ripley Sobo). Less time and attention is paid to the modern part of the movie, and a general atmosphere of schmaltz swallows up the carefully orchestrated mood of the Peter-and-Beverly love story.

Up until that point, there's a lot to like in “Winter's Tale.” Sure, Crowe tends to growl or scream all of his lines, and there's cheese aplenty. But the characters are memorable, even the bit parts — William Hurt as Beverly's no-nonsense father; Mckayla Twiggs as Beverly's precocious younger sister; and Kevin Corrigan as Pearly's dimwitted right-hand man.

You don't see a lot of magic in dramas these days, so it would be easy to write off a flying horse (or any other number of fantastical elements) as ridiculous. But much of the sorcery in “Winter's Tale” is stunningly captured, whether it's Pearly's face cracking into pieces when he loses his temper or the way Beverly sees bright glints of light everywhere. And although there are missteps in the plotting, Akiva Goldsman (who wrote “A Beautiful Mind” and adapted this screenplay) does good work directing his feature debut.

“Winter's Tale” is ambitious with its otherworldly ingredients and temporal leaps. It's not always a success, but the movie has one thing going for it: spot-on casting.

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Two stars. PG-13. Contains violence and some sensuality. 118 minutes.

Ratings Guide: Four stars masterpiece, three stars very good, two stars OK, one star poor, no stars waste of time.